A reader posted this article in my comments. It seems the Atlantic City Press is reporting that Chris Christie is ducking yet another chance to debate his opponents for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

The article quotes one of his challengers, Rick Merkt, as saying, "My attitude is the more debates the better. It's better for people to see the candidates, get a sense of their experience and their positions, and it should be encouraged."

Merkt has proposed a dozen debates. That seems realistic to me. I realize Christie's strategy is to avoid giving his opponents name recognition, but the choice of the next governor is too important to be made without the voters getting a chance to head what the candidates have to say.

So far, Christie hasn't said much of anything. The only tough stand he's taken is to copy Merkt's line about gutting COAH, the affordable housing bureaucracy. And he only did that after it became apparent that it's a safe stance in a GOP primary.

Other than that, it's the usual platitudes about cutting waste, fraud and abuse. That's nice, and a good position for a former prosecutor who did a lot of good work in that area.

But it's not the illegal activity that's the problem in this state. It's the legal activity. The courts have rigged the school-funding system so that just one school district, Newark, gets more state aid than all the disticts in Bergen, Somerset, Sussex and Morris counties combined. So far, we haven't heard Christie say what he'd do about that - or any other major issue.

Meanwhile his refusal to debate makes people think he has something to hide. Given all the gossip that's arisen around him, that's not a good idea at all.

I would urge every Republican voter to insist on a dozen debates. Christie may think avoiding debates is a good strategy, but in this state we've always had a tradition of lots of debates prior to primaries. we usually have so many that you can't keep track of them all. And this in turn gives the voters valuable information about the candidates. In 2005, for example, conservatives were shocked to hear Bret Schundler say that he supported the Abbott decision, which set up that school-funding system that deprives the suburbs of property-tax relief.

We still don't know where Christie stands on Abbott and how he would reverse it. We do know, however, that his old buddy Stuart Rabner is now the chief justice of the state Supreme Court. That's not encouraging. Judges and governors have been doing a tag team on taxpayers for decades now. And it was a Republican governor named Christie (Whitman) who was the worst in this regard.

So tell the party's hand-picked candidate that if he's not debating, you're not voting for him.

ALSO: This editorial in the Asbury Park Press calls on Christie to release all the details of that no-bid contract for legal services he gave to the former U.S. attorney who let his brother off lightly in a stock-market scandal two years previously.

"Taxpayers and voters have grown increasingly wary of the interconnectedness of those involved in government -- particularly when those relationships involve high-paying, no-bid contracts," says the editorial.

Christie's non-campaign is doomed to fail in this regard. If he would simply get out there and make an honest run for the nomination, he wouldn't be dogged by this sort of thing.

PLUS:Jim Geraghty of the National Review is watching the race here in Jersey.